Look, Passengers is a beautiful movie to look at. The spaceship is gorgeous, the special effects are solid, and the premise—waking up 90 years early on a colony ship—had real potential.

But then it goes completely off the rails ethically. Chris Pratt's character wakes up Jennifer Lawrence's character from hibernation because he's lonely and attracted to her, essentially murdering her future and everyone she knows. The movie tries to frame this as a romantic dilemma, and that's where it loses the plot entirely.

Critics savaged it (30% on RT) while general audiences were more forgiving (63%), which tells you everything: it's watchable popcorn entertainment if you don't think too hard, but falls apart under any ethical scrutiny. The 2.9/5 on Letterboxd (where film nerds hang out) is particularly damning.

If you're going to watch this with teens, make it a teaching moment about consent, autonomy, and red flags in relationships. Because the movie itself doesn't do that work—it wants you to root for a romance built on a foundation of catastrophic betrayal. That's not wholesome, that's a horror movie pretending to be a love story.